Stone Gate, Zagreb

The last surviving gate of medieval Gradec, the Stone Gate is both a historic passage and a working shrine tucked into the walls of Zagreb's Upper Town. According to local tradition, a painting of the Virgin and Child survived a devastating eighteenth-century fire unharmed, and the image was enshrined behind a wrought-iron grille within the vaulted tunnel. Today residents light candles and leave votive plaques along the darkened passage. The gate connects the cobbled lanes above with the streets descending to the lower town.